Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Masters of Death The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust by Richard Rhodes lays out the history of the murder squads used by the Nazis to kill the Jews in the aftermath of the attacks om Poland and the USSR. In most discussions of the Holocaust the death camps get more play then these SS units but the author points out that the reason for the creation of the death camps was a direct result of the difficulties the Nazis had with these units. The use of gas was actually found to be more traumatic on the perpetrators then shooting the victims in cold blood. Mostly because they were forced to handle the bodies afterward.

The author does a decent job describing the various atrocities as well as the background of the units. There is an ongoing historical debate about the involvement of "average" Germans in the Holocaust. Rhodes shows that the average member of the death squads were already human scum prior to their involvement.